September 13, 2025 - RandomTarget13

10 Working in Target Hell

I left Target @ 5 years ago after 10 years of working there.

Honestly, I could write a book full of ‘wonderful’ stories about the level of incompetence I saw there.

Here are just a few:

1.) The last couple of year there I worked as our store’s receiving associate.

Our truck crew routinely broke things threw them away, then wrote down the UPS and quantity.

Problem was many items that were damaged has to be sent back to our DC our processed as hazardous materials. Talked to Team leads, talked to E. Team Leads, etc. No one seemed to grasp the concept. Doing this not only broke company guidelines, also broke state law by throwing away hazardous materials. It was finally solved when a District Manager witnessed chemicals being thrown in the compactor. People were fired and the situation was resolved.

2.) There was always a message of ‘teamwork’. Honestly, I believe in teamwork, but at Target it is a joke. The culture there is F everyone else to get ahead. For example: Our early morning and truck crew would time their work. Toward the end of their shift there always seemed to be large amounts of boxes and garbage that needed to be cleaned up. It was by design.

One day I heard one of TL tell them ‘It’s ok to leave a little ‘clean-up’ behind if you are short on time’. Translation: be lazy and leave all of your shit for someone else to clean up. And they took that message to heart. All of the cardboard and trash from their team would magically appear @ 5 mins before their team ‘had’ to leave. None of them worked at all at maintaining the standards in their work area.

3.) Also, while I was working in receiving, I put in for vacation time. It was approved. Friday before vacation I asked my lead who was covering, (we will call them Jen). Jen said, ‘you are on the schedule’. I showed her my approved vacation request, (and the one I had put in her box two weeks earlier.) I was begged to work by leadership; they had approved vacation for the two other people at the location were trained in the receiving area. Since this had happened twice before, I shrugged as said too bad. I was going out of state. The first time it happened I had been a good sport and changed my vacation. That’s the real ‘Target philosophy if you let them, they will screw you’.

4.) While working backroom I was taking a piece of furniture up to customer service. A Softlines Team Member came back and asked if I could get a booster seat down for them. Told them I was taking furniture up front for them, showed them where the seat was, moved a ladder for them, and went on my way. Figured no big deal the box weighed 4 lbs., they could do it.

NOPE. I returned to the back to find 3 Softlines team members and 2 Softlines Team leads chatting around the ladder I had moved. On the way back I had been stopped a number of times for questions though Women’s and Men’s clothing. I was again asked about getting down the booster seat. To be honest I was a bit miffed, I asked how many Softlines Team Members it WOULD take to climb a F-ing ladder rather than leaning on it? I climbed the one step on the ladder and got the booster seat, Then I told our entire Softlines team that was currently on the clock they had guests on the floor with questions.

5.) Before I worked Receiving, I was a daytime backroom TM. At the time Target had a Presentation Team, which set and stocked all of the POGs. Part of my job was to help they pull batches to help stock their POGs. One of the first things I would do in the morning would check in with them and see what they needed pulled. If their pulls were not handled properly, they would roll over into the daily pulls, inflating them, and causing problem in the system. So, we tried to plan the day accordingly to avoid doing double work.

Then we got a new TL for Presentation that was a moron. Or a bigger moron than the other ones. Didn’t understand the replenishment system. Didn’t understand how to count past 10. (However, he was a world class ass kisser.) Tried to explain if the Presentation pulls were not completed before a certain time, they would roll over into the daily pulls and cause the daily pulls to be huge. then cause a large amount of back stock. In short, a lot on unnecessary work.

All they had to do is put the batches in early, we would pull them for them, then they could stock the shelves, then we could backstock for them, no problem. That was too complicated for moron. He wanted to do it himself. Waited and doubled and in some cases tripled the daily pulls. It’s ok though, most of it was backstock. Moron didn’t last long; he kissed the right ass to get promoted.

*sigh* Honestly, I did work with some good people at Target. For most of my time I worked in the Back Room with a long timer we will call Red.

We kept things running through like 7 Team Leads 5 Executive Team Leads and 4 Store Managers.

Never appreciated by our Leaders lol but we got things done. Best advice I can give you, if you work in Hell is if you find a decent coworker rely on them. The ‘Leadership Team doesn’t give a crap about you. You are a number.

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Customer Experience / TargetSucks